JOSEPH CLARK (1834-1926)    Biography

The Chess Players (England, 1860)

Sold

Oil on canvas
Signed

Dimensions:

66.00cm wide   55.20cm high (25.98 inches wide  21.73 inches high)

Provenance:
Private Collection, USA; to 2003

Exhibition History
London, Royal Academy, 1860, number 456

Description / Expertise
Member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Oil Colours (R.O.I.)

Joseph Clark exhibited his works at the Royal Academy from 1857, continuing almost every year until 1904(1). The Chess Players was one of two works that he showed at the academy in 1860; the other was a religious subject, Hagar and Ishmael. At this time he was living in London at the Belle Vue Villas in fashionable Holloway.

Clark’s paintings capture the spirit of Victorian England with playful titles such as Preparing for Sunday, The New Cap and “Goodnight Father”. Household games joyfully played by friends and family were depicted by Clark several times, for example The Draught Players which he had painted the previous year to The Chess Players, and he returns to the subject of chess in 1876 with Checkmate.

Joseph Clark is known to have sent his paintings to America and perhaps this was the case with The Chess Players, which came from a private collection in the USA. In 1876 he was awarded a medal by Philadelphia for two works which he had shipped to them, The Sick Child (1857) and The Bird’s Nest (1874).


1. Except 1892